Tuesday, November 22, 2016

As
I noted in my review last week, fairy tales provide fertile ground
for exploring erotic themes. Before She Wakes by Sharon Lynn
Fisher collects six original fantasy stories that might fit very well
with some of Grimm’s offerings.

In
“The Dragonmaid’s Secret”, a young woman born and bred to
defend her Provence village along with her Persian dragon Aurora is
seduced by a stranger and discovers that, like he, she’s a dragon
shifter.

“Raven
Takes a Pearl” introduces an enigmatic being, half human and half
bird, who occupies a castle overlooking a blasted land. When village
woman Pearl confronts him in an attempt to retrieve a stolen
keepsake, she finds he wants to possess her, too.

“The
Garden Rules” begins in the contemporary world, but the protagonist
is soon swept into an alternative reality where carnality reigns
supreme. She must abandon the rules by which she has ordered her life
as she abandons her body to lust.

“The
Kelpie’s Prize” is a steam punk delight in which the wizard
Merlin’s nemesis Viviane has been reincarnated as a Victorian
folklorist.

“Willa
and the Wisp”, my favorite tale in the collection, unfolds in the
New Bayou, a vast swamp that covers the flooded ruins of New Orleans.
The bayou is haunted by dire and magical creatures. Willa, a human
who makes her living ferrying people around the swamp in her boat,
must defeat, or at least come to terms, with the bayou’s magic in
order to survive.

The
final tale, “The Dragonfly Prince”, offers the classic fairy tale
scenario of a beautiful, unfortunate woman forced to marry a monster.
In Ms. Fisher’s story, the match turns out to be less traumatic
than in many versions of this legend.

Overall,
I enjoyed Before She Wakes. Ms. Fisher’s stories benefit
from both her vivid imagination and her gorgeous prose. Each one has
a distinctive atmosphere, though all partake of some fairy tale
quality. Her protagonists (all female) tend to be clever and brave,
but highly susceptible to the lures of the flesh—especially
when that flesh belongs to beings who are not quite human. Many of
the stories include moody, intensely erotic scenes with a kinky edge.

Unfortunately,
some of the stories suffer from what I can only call gratuitous sex.

You
may wonder what I’m talking about. After all, this is a book
labeled as erotica. Why should I object to the sex?

I
don’t object to sex that fits the story and the mood.
Unfortunately, the author tends to throw in sexual activities that
seem inconsistent with the characters and which do not advance the
plot. “The Dragonmaid’s Secret” is perhaps the worst offender
in this regard. Early in the story, the Celtic dragon Roark takes
Isabeau as his lover and awakens her to her true identity. The erotic
scenes between these two are glorious, ecstatic, overwhelming. Then
Roark brings his mate to the court of Louis the Fourteenth. All at
once she’s playing sex games with a couple of Louis’ mistresses.
The dragonmaid of earlier in the story would never have done this.
Nor would she have dallied with the king himself, as she does in a
later scene. For me, these extra sex scenes reduced rather than
enhanced the eroticism of the tale. I almost felt as though the
author had gotten instructions from her editor or publisher, to “sex
it up” and “make it kinky”.

“The
Dragonfly Prince” has a similar problem. The erotic interactions
between Rowan and her transgenic bridegroom Dayne sizzle, but for
some reason the author felt impelled to turn the story into a
ménage—a threesome involving Rowan’s step-brother, of all
people. This didn’t work in the context of the story at all (in my
opinion). It felt contrived, even exploitative. “Step-brother
stories are hot”, someone might have counseled. “Better include
one in the book.”

There’s
a non-trivial amount of BDSM-like activity in the book. As with the
example above, in some cases it felt artificial rather than integral
to the story. “Raven Takes a Pearl” was an exception. Pearl
trusts Raven enough to offer him her life. That sort of trust lies at
the heart of BDSM.

Perhaps
I am being unfair. It may be that the sexual activities I’ve
labeled “gratuitous” truly reflect the author’s fantasies
rather than being additions calculated to increase the heat quotient
of the book. Possibly other readers would not find them so jarring or
incongruous. Alas, for me, they somewhat spoiled what would have
otherwise been a haunting and beautiful book.